Computers on wheels

TREASURE
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Getting back to the subject of automobiles, and briefly setting aside a discussion of “isms,” I can share a couple of items from my own experience.

Back in the 90s I was at a meeting at the MIT Media Lab where I chatted with some guys from General Motors. They were there as part of an initial phase of seeing how cars and trucks could fit into this new digital environment. They spoke to me about their early drawing-board plans to harness the Internet in service of their company, knowing that soon enough the whole world would be connected that way. At the time they spoke more about remote firmware upgrades as their motivation for having their vehicles “phone home” but it was clear that they were looking very broadly at opportunities. Later I heard a Ford executive say they had become more of a finance company than a car company.

From 2008-2015 I managed a radio station. Having come from a long career in digital communications, I was highly attuned to how the Internet and the airwaves might and might not intersect. During those years I went to a lot of national meetups and discussed strategies with other station managers and executives of National Public Radio and other entities as to how this might all play out.

As you all probably know, the main use of radio is in vehicles…the good old car radio. But with competition and tight margins, car companies have been looking for years for ways to cut costs and increase profits. One cost item is the radio. An AM-FM radio came standard in every car sold in America and probably most of Europe for decades. Radio stations depend on that listenership for the great bulk of their financial support either through ads or direct contributions. So they pay a lot of attention to developments along these lines.

But car companies, that are now really more like finance companies, saw quite long ago that as consumers shifted towards getting info and entertainment through the 'Net, they would soon enough have a golden opportunity to turn a cost item - the radio - into a subscription-based Internet device. It meant that they could partner with the big phone companies to provide Internet-enabled communication devices for which they could get a monthly cut. Now they all provide this and soon enough radios will be phased out. From cost item to profit center. Sweet. For them.

It is no big stretch to see them applying that logic to other parts of the vehicle like battery power, seat heaters, etc. Tesla has shown the way to this consumer-unfriendly promised land.

So, I say that regardless of what one might want to label things, Cory is correct about what is going on with cars and consumers.

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It is tied to DRM because if you don’t want to participate in these rent-better-performance schemes, you have to fiddle with the software.

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@jcoate thank you for sharing your insightful perspective on the evolving automotive landscape. Shift towards subscription-based models raises important questions about the future of consumer ownership and data privacy.
As Cory Doctorow and @alberto pointed out, we are moving towards “new standards” of car ownership and to me this future seems inevitable. I feel like the end user has only the option to accept it or not own a car at all.
Thinking about it I come to two questions:

  • How can we strike a balance between the benefits of data-driven innovation and the need to protect consumer privacy in connected cars?
  • What kind of regulation should be imposed to ensure that data collection and usage are transparent, ethical, and accountable?
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Cory Doctorow is a very well known and well respected writer in Internet circles. He is even the subject of a Wikipedia page, so he is “notable”! I take his opinions seriously.

On a first reading, though, I must say that his piece on “Autoenshittification” reads to me largely as a mash-up of his detailed reading of Yanis Varoufakis’s “Technofeudalism” along with a heavy dose of 1984.

Let me first agree where I can agree.

  • Undoubtedly, the massive use of networked electronics in cars presents an opportunity for data to be extracted, whether openly or covertly, and used (annoyingly) for advertising and (potentially dangerously) for all kinds of surveillance, tracking, as Doctorow says.
  • To me, this puts cars in a similar category to mobile phones, which are routinely subject to potentially even more intrusive data collection — certainly not less.
  • Because cars are more expensive than mobile phones, there is probably more risk that they will be rented rather than bought; and the threat of repossession is more acute, meaning that owners of those kinds of car are more likely to be pressured into behaviour which would not otherwise be chosen.
  • IP is widely and unreasonably used to create the kind of artificial scarcity that fuels capitalism in general. (Whether it fuels rentier capitalism / technofeudalism is unclear to me.) This is why I am a keen supporter of free / open source software.
  • I enjoy and appreciate Varoufakis’s analysis of what could have been called rentier capitalism being like a new form of feudalism, with digital fiefdoms. (I haven’t actually read that book, but I have watched several related deep interviews with him.) Sadly, I haven’t yet detached myself from the clutches of Google, but I hope that will come to pass in the not-too-distant future.

I guess that’s where we part company — not so much on the substance, but definitely on the tone. Doctorow states, with no evidence, that “drivers hate all the digital bullshit, from the janky touchscreens to the shitty, wildly insecure apps”. I can well believe that he hates these things – even that his friends and the people he talks to also hate them – but to me his statement is basically unfounded. Many normal people enjoy these things.

And while it’s interesting to apply the Technofeudalism perspective to cars, is this really the most important aspect to focus on, for us modern Western consumers? It seems to me that Varoufakis puts more attention on the Google, Facebook, Amazon and their kin and counterparts in China. It would be a pity if the message to us abused consumers came across as: well you just have to buy dumb phones and second-hand cars and all will be well. That may appeal to people, and it’s not a bad idea, but still, I would prefer to see a more radical, as well as practically effective approach. After all, when we’re dealing with carbon emissions, I find it very awkward to be focusing on switching the lights off when you’re not in the room. As if that makes a big difference … for sure, turn them off anyway, but don’t imagine that that’s going to solve the problem.

It’s not clear to me, but my impression is that Varoufakis is short on plausible solutions. It is clear that Doctorow, here, is not giving us any positive way forward — at least, beyond the doubtfully effective “just say no”. And that to me is a real issue. It seems like Doctorow, perhaps (I speculate here) driven by the agenda of his own persona, is playing along the same lines as many other writers who play to the audience perversely receptive to the message “we’re all going to hell”. Worse, I can see conspiracy theorists picking this up and exaggerating it to give the impression that digital technology is all bad. For sure, a lot of the ways it is applied are bad, but exaggeration simply reinforces polarisation, which is itself part of the wider social problem.

I appreciate measured and reasonable analyses, seeing different perspectives and understanding the motivations and drivers behind these different perspectives; and particularly when they are allied with calls to practical, accessible actions that we can take to make a real impression on the problems highlighted, while recognising and valuing the other related perspectives underlying the many other initiatives that are pointing in the right general direction. This relates a little to my writings on ontological commoning and collective ikigai.

My own way forward would emphasise collectivity, including in particular the ways we can help each other overcome the kind of acquisitive consumerism that is so rampant; and the ways we can overcome the pervasive individualism that seems to me still to run through so much of this kind of critique.

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New standards of car ownership? How about non-ownership? Wouldn’t that be better for us all, wherever possible? As unchallenged assumptions goes, I see that as a huge one.

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Cory is an unabashed advocate who has been hammering on certain themes for more than 20 years. DRM is one of those themes. When he and I worked together at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (2002-3) he had fewer arenas of digital tech to cite as examples. Back then he focused on certain printers that would not work if you tried to resupply them with third-party ink.

Then, with Apple and later John Deere (the tractor company), he expanded to advocate for the right-to-repair. This has gained traction in the USA. California just passed a right-to-repair law, becoming the third state to do so. There is no doubt in my mind that Cory has influenced this trend.

And I also suspect there is a tone of despair in his latest campaign against “enshittification.” I must admit I share that feeling. We all know where the planet and its degrading climate is headed. Doesn’t seem to matter enough to enough people. But then, it’s the human race. Twas ever thus.

As for how the EU might treat this situation when it comes to vehicles, there is some built-in tension with the EU being strong on personal privacy and equally, if not more, strong on DRM protections for companies. I’m not sure how this knife-edge will be walked.

As for how consumers regard the electronics in their new cars, I agree that not everyone “hates” these features. My daughter this year bought a new Volvo that is loaded to the gills with this stuff and she, a tech savvy woman, is generally unconcerned. She knows that Spotify is not fair to the artists upon which they built their fortune. That has not stopped her from subscribing – in her car. The point being that the conveniences these digital utilities bring overshadow whatever social issues reside on the negative side of the balance. So, while I agree with Cory about the dangers these intrusions bring, I agree that probably most people are fine with the tradeoff.

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Thank you for this extensive point of view. I agree that cars, with their embedded networked electronics, present similar risks to those posed by mobile phones. The potential for data extraction, surveillance, and tracking is concerning, and the issue of ownership and control over personal data is a critical one in today’s digital age.

Still, can this development be controlled, stopped or influenced? Looking from the perspective of my car-owning friends, I don’t see any of them bothered that much not to use the car. I believe until the majority of the end-users don’t complain or revolt, car manufacturers will continue their technofeudalism (if I understood the term correctly).
Even if certain policies and/or regulations are imposed the easiest way for car manufacturers is to “oblige” you to give data for usage of the car they produced (and that you own). In my opinion, people will still be inclined towards giving their data than not owning/driving a car.

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From an environmental perspective would be the best.
Just to understand better, by non-ownership, do you mean using shared vehicles?
If that is the case, I can still imagine shared vehicles will take our data.

Continuing my previous thought funny thing comes to my mind. Imagine every time you enter a shared vehicle where you need to accept to share your data or reject it - kind of the same logic we have nowadays with accepting and rejecting cookies. I can see people rejecting it, but I can also see car manufacturers making it a “hassle” if you reject it e.g. unpleasant experience, slower speed, long process to start the car etc.

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Non-car-ownership is obviously a tricky topic. There are several things that are perfectly feasible: doing all possible for cycling; treating public transport as a public service, not a ridiculously privatised set of competing businesses; remote working; car sharing, yes, as well. I have personal experience of car sharing and it’s not so easy to create an efficient effective system. Should be possible though. Of course, the trade-off is convenience. But, in principle, why not have public policy dedicated to reduce numbers of cars? (Well, yes, the industry lobby — same old same old …) But I only see this actually happening with the help of powerful incentives, probably from government.

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We had better do something. I just read that worldwide around 530 million liters of petroleum (in all its forms) were burned each day this month of November.

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I can agree only partially. This is indeed a critique piece, but Doctorow does have a very clear path towards the end of enshittification: robust antitrust policies, which include, specifically, adversarial interoperability.

Robust antitrust policies: block most or all mergers. Break down companies. Force companies to disintegrate vertically, to avoid abuse of monopoly power: the search engine company (Google) must not companies whose products are being searched (YouTube). The car company (Ford) is not allowed to own the finance company that issues loans on cars (Ford), etc. Adversarial interoperability: force companies to use standard components so that it is easy for competitors to steal their clients (if, of course, they make a better product). A great form of legal introduction of adversarial interoperability was the portability of mobile phone numbers. Before that was forced by the EU, changing your mobile phone provider meant telling everybody your phone number was now different, and you risked missing important business calls, etc. In cars, adversarial interoperability means that I could make a better and cheaper accelerator pedal and sell it to Mercedes drivers, who would then had the choice to opt out of Mercedes’s own solution.

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thanks @alberto for highlighting the proposed political ways forward. All of these sound like good ideas. Whether they are politically feasible is naturally a difficult question. What I was really meaning is that Doctorow isn’t giving us, common people, ways forward for ourselves as individuals and communities. Just through politics isn’t a very satisfying answer. If it’s not going to be the pathetic refrain of “they need to change” or “the system has to change” political solutions need to be attached to a credible strategy towards that political change.

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This is because Doctorow believes the solutions to these problems to be collective and systemic. And I agree. Just as you cannot recycle your way out of the climate crisis, you cannot de-enshittify by consumer behavior alone, by “voting with your wallet”.

Political, systemic solutions are not necessarily unrealistic, on the contrary. Just last month: EU Parliament adopts Right to Repair law with broad support – Euractiv.

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Speaking of individual effort and the topic of recycling, out here in the SF Bay Area, the big junkyards where the metal recycling happens, won’t take in things like old radiators and copper wiring harnesses unless you are licensed to do so. This wasn’t always the case, but has been for the past several years.

But there are now a very large number of small-scale recyclers picking through anything they can find to bring in to exchange for cash and I suspect that the big yards don’t want to deal with all these small fry operators. I can understand their reasons, but it would be helpful if there were more outlets for this kind of recycling.

Taking in aluminum cans is easy, and I still see some old Vietnamese people around carrying a pole across their shoulders balancing two plastic trash bags full of cans they found picking through public trash cans and similar places.

But when it comes to cars, it has become much more difficult. Maybe some are afraid people will steal cars just to strip them and sell the parts as scrap. Indeed, that does happen. It happened to me one time years ago with an old car I had.

But back in the 70s when I lived in Tennessee, there were scrap places that would give you cash for even small amounts of copper, brass, “short steel” and other forms of automobile recycling. I think it would be useful if such outlets opened up. But in this industry too I think there has been a lot of consolidation.

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I agree that political solutions are occasionally practical. But like I say, let’s evaluate the feasibility, work out realistic scenarios and strategies. I think that’s what I’m missing. Not necessarily from Doctorow. But then, that’s recognising that he isn’t detailing the answer, and if we’re generous we just need to accept that responsibility ourselves.

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He is advocating at least one part of the answer: stronger anti-trust laws and oversight.

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Well, yes. The question I am putting here is: how is this practically to be achieved, politically? Is it on the agenda, or manifesto, of any major political party that has a chance of being elected or influencing an election? If not, then how, plausibly, could it get there? And if there is doubt about it being achievable politically, what are we left with as common people?

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The easy answer is, “we’re screwed.” Or maybe more like it, “we screwed ourselves by constantly voting into office people who cater to the big donors who provide most of their campaign money.” Until and unless that changes in big ways,

I don’t see much progress on this front unless something of a sea change comes over vast numbers of the European and American electorate in which we demand a more egalitarian society. Antitrust enforcement isn’t really a top-of-mind issue for most people and the big donors and forces seeking increased concentration of wealth will do whatever they have to do to prevent it.

Back to Cory for a minute, I have known him and his main issues for more than 20 years. He has been hammering on certain issues for that whole time, refining his arguments as more evidence presents itself. But he is a practical guy and I think knows that his role is to shine light and to educate. His ideas increasingly get traction, but it takes study and a degree of sophistication to grasp it. So, given how huge numbers of people don’t even believe that climate change is exaggerated by humans, I’m not real confident about this issue.

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Car industry often don’t hear the consumers voice. New era in car industry produce to sophisticated vehicles and often not reliable as it used to be ordinary cars in the past. And the every new model is more To conclusion was that car industry is producing cars for which consumers often doesn’t want. But the drivers have no choice, and they are buying what is in the market, since they need a vehicle.

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I was asked by @bojanbobic to add my thoughts about the text. I think it’s informative but I do experience it as quite disenfranchising and uninspiring. It repeats the same kind of facts and arguments about stripping consumer, owner and citizen with “capitalist” and “technofeudalist” digital technology. Between the lines I read it as a text telling a story about a society where the people who experience the consequences of unregulated development in products and services have retreated from the field of (party) politics.
Thus these people have left the debate and the lawmaking and regulation process with a walkover.

I also don’t find the text a very engaging read the way it’s written. I wound find it more engaging and intriguing the way that the authors novels are written. I do like several of the authors fictional text but can understand those who get tired of reading this, a collection of bad news written in a long rant. I would have found it very much a source for engagement and action if it would have been formulated in a way like a guide “multiple ways to combat and regulate anti-consumer practices”. I find much more energy in a constructive conversation in a generative vision such as in the way that the goals of the EU wide Right-to-Repair campaign Repair.EU is formulated. I think it is important and it has been fruitful as the new EU laws have been signed - which is only one step in the right direction.

In a leap forward, the new law supports independent repair and improves consumers’ access to affordable repair options, by introducing rules for reasonable prices for original parts as well as banning software practices which prevent independent repair and the use of compatible and reused spare parts. Campaigners applaud this as a step in the right direction for affordable repair.

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